


the world keeps turning

by CoffeeAndArrows



Category: White Collar (TV 2009)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fake Character Death, Post-Finale, but quickly followed by some v soft and necessary conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:41:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29539770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoffeeAndArrows/pseuds/CoffeeAndArrows
Summary: If he was less observant maybe the faint smudges of mascara at the corners of Sara’s eyes would go unnoticed, maybe the way her hand shakes before she curls her fingers tightly around her keys, digging the sharp metal into her palm, would slip past him. Maybe his eyes wouldn't instantly be drawn to the slight sheen of tears in her eyes, clinging to the tips of her eyelashes, beautiful and heartbreaking and fragile as she stands in the doorway to her apartment looking right through him.But as it is he knows her too well, even after all this time - it only takes one look at her and he knows he's too late.or, a fic in which neal goes to london to see sara immediately post-finale but doesn't get there until after peter has called
Relationships: Neal Caffrey/Sara Ellis
Comments: 15
Kudos: 18





	the world keeps turning

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know if anyone even reads white collar fic given, you know, it finished airing seven years ago, but anyway here's a hyper specific fic that i wrote simply because i personally wanted to read it 
> 
> and it's only getting posted because, and i quote, 'it would be a disservice to withhold your gift of making people cry' so ah.. enjoy that

If he was less observant maybe the faint smudges of mascara at the corners of Sara’s eyes would go unnoticed, maybe the way her hand shakes before she curls her fingers tightly around her keys, digging the sharp metal into her palm, would slip past him. Maybe his eyes wouldn't instantly be drawn to the slight sheen of tears in her eyes, clinging to the tips of her eyelashes, beautiful and heartbreaking and fragile as she stands in the doorway to her apartment, looking right through him.

But as it is he knows her too well, even after all this time - it only takes one look at her and he knows he's too late.

Her eyes flicker over him, desperately drinking in every detail, still looking at him like a ghost. Her shoulders tremble, and the fragments of glass that lodged themselves in Neal's heart the moment he realised this plan was his only option twist a little further, grief that's not even  _ his  _ threatening to overwhelm him.

Peter must have called her. Or at least Neal hopes, desperately, that Peter was the one who called her; the idea of someone else breaking the news to her, of it coming from the cool, impersonal chain of command, from someone who didn't know him and care about him and certainly didn't care how she might feel hurts unbearably. Not that the thought of Peter calling to tell her he took a bullet to the chest whilst desperately chasing after his freedom and didn't even make it to the hospital hurts any less. The idea of Sara’s knuckles, white around the phone she’d be gripping far too tightly, still sitting at her desk in a hauntingly empty office because she’s still the same Sara he always knew - the first one there and the last one to leave - completely alone as she hears that any hope of the future they'd both been tentatively dreaming of is gone -

Neal's stomach turns and his inhale is far shakier than before, but he still can't tear his eyes from Sara, standing in the open doorway. 

It feels like they stand there for an age, until -

"I swear to god Caffrey, I'm going to kill you myself," Sara manages, but the anger that Neal deserves isn't there. Instead, the words waver, hovering on the precipice of something deeper, darker, more desperate. "I thought you were  _ dead." _

_ I can explain,  _ he almost tells her, but a wave of guilt stops him and he almost stumbles at the force of it. 

He holds his hands out, open - a surrender. His smile is as broken as the life he left behind. "Surprise," he tries weakly, and Sara shakes her head, turning away, pressing the back of a hand to her mouth but failing miserably to stifle a sob. She's still shaking, and Neal hates it. He hates this. He hates that  _ he did this.  _

"C'mere," he manages.

(It's all he can manage.)

The cheap off licence bottle of wine clutched in Sara's fist finds its way to the dresser, her purse finds its way to the floor, and she finds her way to his arms, burying herself against his chest, the fingers of one hand curling into his sweater with a desperation that makes his heart lodge firmly in his throat. "Sara," he manages quietly, but she murmurs something that sounds suspiciously like a tearful 'shut  _ up'  _ and grips him tighter, so he does. 

He just holds her.

He holds her, steady and unwavering, as her breathing hitches and her shoulders shake and her tears fall. 

He holds her as she tucks her face into the crook of his shoulder and curses him under her breath, holds her as the composure that's been hanging by a thread since the moment she answered the phone crumbles to dust, holds her as she reveals the cracks in her walls and the depths of her feelings, feelings that he had accidentally used to tear her apart.

He holds her, and murmurs apologies into her hair. 

*

"Does Peter think you're dead?"

She must know the answer to that. If Peter hadn't believed his death was real he wouldn't have called - at the very least, not like that. Even if he was being careful he would have given her some kind of clue, a hint that only she would recognise. Something to hold on to to make sure she didn't end up distraught over a lie. 

Sara pulls back, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand, the anger that should have been present earlier visible in flashes now. Her hands grip him tightly, fingers digging into his arms. _"_ _ Neal. " _

_ Does Peter think you're dead? _

He opens his mouth to speak but no words come out, the weight of the last twenty four hours pushing down on his chest. It's suffocating. The knowledge of what he's done. He'd left them, crushed, mourning him, and it's not like he'd had a choice because there was only one way for this to end but the way Peter had looked at him as he tried to say goodbye is seared into his brain, and it isn't hard to imagine the look on Mozzie's face when Peter would have called or the way Elizabeth's shoulders would crumple at the news and -

"Neal," Sara says again, but this time softer and with a blatant concern that makes his heart ache and his eyes burn with the tears he'd refused to shed until now. If she didn’t know the answer to her question already, she must by now. Sara lets her hands trail down to his wrists and she settles them against his skin, thumbs brushing gently across his pulse points. She doesn't say  _ it's okay  _ and she doesn't say  _ explain this to me, please.  _ Instead she says "We can talk about this later" and Neal's breath leaves him in a rush. 

They haven't seen each other in months, and yet she still knows him better than anyone else ever has. 

*

They order takeout, because it's late and Neal can't remember the last time he ate and Sara was never much of a chef anyway, and the few mouthfuls Neal manages to force down are good. After a while though he gives up on pushing noodles around and pushes his plate aside. His stomach is still churning and eating is the last thing on his mind. 

(There's far too much on his mind. He wishes he could turn it off.) 

Sara lets the silence fill the space - it had never been awkward with them, and it wasn’t now. They were both too prone to getting caught up in their own heads to mind it, and they had always shared a level of comfort that made quiet moments like this feel natural. But when it gets too much - too heavy, too thick - Sara nudges his foot with her own to catch his attention and talks about London, about the cases she's working on that might interest him, about the places she's come to love that she'll maybe be able to show him now he's here. He manages a weak smile at that, and she returns it. 

They don't talk about New York or the Panthers or Peter and El and everyone else he left behind. That'll come later - Sara won't let him avoid her questions forever, and he's well aware that the forgiveness he's been temporarily granted is conditional on the explanation she needs. She's giving him some time to catch his breath before that though, and he's immensely grateful for it. She's better than he ever deserved. 

It’s a combination of jet lag and exhaustion and the heaviness of the day that knocks him out eventually. They’re sat on the floor leaning back against the couch, Sara’s shoulder firmly against his. She’s barely let go of him since he first walked in the door, although she’s tried to be subtle about it. It’s a gentle hand on his arm here and a lingering brush of her fingers there, as if she still needs reassurance that he’s real and alive and here sitting in her apartment rather than bleeding out in an ambulance halfway around the world.

“Come to bed,” she says with a nudge when his eyes drift shut. He should protest - they haven’t discussed what they are to each other yet, and she hasn't had a chance to judge the decisions he's made and decide whether he even deserves her forgiveness in the first place. She must see him waver though, because her eyebrows curve down and she makes no attempt to hide her concern for him, as if he's the one in this situation who needs concern. He doesn't argue with her though. He can't pretend for a second that her touch and her smile and the refuge she's offering him in her home isn't the only thing holding the broken pieces of him together. 

(Given the way she curls up in his arms with her head against his shoulder and her palm flat over his heart, she needs this just as much as he does.)

*

It's her fingertips against his temple that he feels first when he wakes and he keeps his eyes closed, lets her trace the ridge of his brow and the dip of his nose and the curve of his cheekbones and run the knuckle of her first finger gently across his chin as if she's committing every detail of him to memory, just in case. He doesn't move, relishing it for a little longer because as soon as he's awake he'll have to address everything she let him ignore the night before, and although he's more prepared for it now it's not something he  _ wants  _ to do.

He's not sure she'll understand the choice he made, and the idea of losing her too - however irrational that thought might be - cuts deep enough that his inhale hisses sharply against his teeth. Sara pulls her hand away.

When he opens his eyes she's watching, and for a moment all thoughts of the mess he’s made of his (and everyone else’s) lives fade, overshadowed by the overwhelming realisation of just how much he missed her. His gaze is drawn to the way her hair falls in soft waves over her shoulders, to the curve of her lips and the depth of feeling in her eyes. They’d barely talked since he started working with the Panthers, but there’s none of the distance that Neal half expected. It feels as natural to wake up beside her as it always did back home.

_ Home.  _ When had he started thinking of New York as home?

Neal forces those thoughts away. Sara’s looking at him still - gentle but worried, searching for answers; not a look that demands he talks, but not the opposite either. It's an in between.

Much like him, in more ways than one. 

“It’s easier if you ask,” he says quietly, rolling onto his side just in time to see Sara’s eyes flicker with a fond understanding. They’d done this before, back when things were simpler, when she was sitting on the couch in his apartment with a wine glass in hand, offering him a second chance but only with a foundation of honesty.  _ I don’t know where to start,  _ he’d admitted back then once the teasing had passed and the atmosphere had turned more serious, and the same is true now.  _ But I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.  _

Sara nods. Her hand moves as if to reach out, but she stops herself. “You faked your death,” she starts bluntly, and Neal resists the urge to wince. He was the one who did this. “And currently you’re letting everyone who loves you mourn you.”

_ Don’t say it like that.  _

They have to have this conversation, he reminds himself. So far, he’s told her nothing.

“Peter, Elizabeth, Mozzie, June, Diana, Jones… they  _ all  _ think you’re gone?”

His “yeah” is hoarse, but if anything Sara’s gaze grows harder. 

“That  _ hurts.  _ Fucking hell Neal, I only had a few hours before you turned up and that was bad enough. You can’t do this to people. You can’t just disappear from their lives.”

His guilt amplifies. There’s a pain in her voice that he remembers from the first time they talked about Emily, mixed in with plenty of other baggage that he left behind. (He reminds himself that this is why he didn’t disappear on her. Again.) “I know,” he tells her, then runs his hand through his hair and closes his eyes. “Trust me, I’ve thought about what I’m putting them all through. A lot. The look on Peter’s face when he saw me -” his voice cracks, and he shakes his head. “I didn’t have another choice.” 

Sara considers him carefully. For all of her sharp edges and strong opinions and residual anger from the night before, she’s surprisingly soft with him. "Why not?"

He swallows. She's still looking at him without judgement, no matter how much he might deserve it, and he doesn’t quite know how to answer her. The question is too loaded. He hasn’t even explained the situation properly to her yet, it’s just been snippets here and there, but for some reason that explanation isn’t what his brain provides. "Elizabeth's pregnant," he says quietly. "I don't know if anyone told you."

The surprise and delight in Sara’s eyes only lasts a moment before she props her head up on her arm and frowns slightly. The  _ what's that got to do with this  _ is unspoken.

The thing is, Sara knows about Kate. She was there when Elizabeth got kidnapped because of him. She was there after Ellen, sitting with him through the night, the lifeline he was desperately clinging to. She knew what his dad had done - to him, to Peter, to El. He shrugs one shoulder hopelessly. “I’ll get them hurt.”

When Sara looks at him her broken heart is on her sleeve. “ _ Neal -  _ ”

“Don’t. Please don’t.” Neal doesn’t know when her fingers found their way into his hair, but the sensation makes him stumble over his words. “If the Panthers know I’m alive they’ll come for the people I love, and it’s not just them. I’ve lived too many lives. There are always going to people who want to hurt the ones I care about.”

“That seems like a poor excuse to stop living.”

“I haven’t worked it out yet.”

Sara sighs, long and slow, sinking down into the pillows beside him. 

*

“I don’t like this,” Sara eventually admits. “Keeping this from Peter…”

“Trust me, I know.”

He tells her the rest of it then, in fits and starts. Some of the details come rushing out, others he’s more hesitant with, the words getting caught up in his throat. For someone so good at talking he struggles with it a little too much. He tells her about Keller. About the heist. About the threats and risks and betrayals. Coming up with the plan, executing it and losing a little of himself in the process. Waking up in a body bag. The deaths. The fear. 

The desperate desire to find some way to let Peter and Mozzie and Elizabeth know that he’s okay without putting them in danger or having them attempt to look for him.

When he finishes she kisses him softly, her lips fitting perfectly against his as if nothing has changed since the last time they saw each other. One hand cups the side of his jaw with a tenderness that makes his eyes burn and he slips his fingers into her hair, holding her close. He brushes away the moisture from the corners of her eyes with the pads of his thumbs and swears that he’ll never do this again, and her fingers are soft when they drift across his skin, a silent promise that he’s forgiven, mostly, for what he put her through. 

“You’re okay,” she murmurs when she finally pulls away and rests her forehead against his. “And I’m okay.”

He kisses her again and briefly brushes his lips to her cheek afterwards before she sinks into his open arms just like she had the night before. Somehow, it couldn’t feel more different. 

“We’ll work it out,” she promises, gentle and with a certainty Neal envies.

He just about manages to believe her.

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment because i need validation xx


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